Featured Comment by David A. Goldfarb: "The White Stripes once recorded a video on our front lawn—okay, it wasn't exactly our front lawn, but it was the grassy oval behind Grant's Tomb that we looked out on from the 20th floor of a nearby high rise apartment building. I didn't know who they were at the time, but it was one of the more unusual things I'd seen from our front window, right up there with a migrating flock of turkey vultures that flew right over our building once. We were going birding that day, so I happened to have my Canon F-1N loaded with color slide film and FD 600mm ƒ/4.5 ready to shoot."

The people who will buy these as personal expression of their cultural indedendence, are the same people riding single speed bikes yelling at drivers of Eddie Bauer limited edition jeeps to quit killing the earth!

You know, I'm going to sound really pathetic, but those Holgas are just what I need. Well, not the bright red Special Ed, version, but the cheap, $25 medium format version.

I'm often photographing from galloping horses, so I need something light and simple that will survive occasionally being bashed into a tree, or hitting the ground at 30mph, sometimes with photographer attached...

Anyways, I don't know if David made the post as a joke (or at least humorous commentary :) but I actually found it helpful. Thanks! :>

Eric Schneider,
I don't know what you're thinking of, but a Holga or a Diana will definitely NOT survive being bashed into a tree or hitting the ground at 30 mph. They're made out of fragile plastic and they have all the structural integrity of a juice box. Consider a used Pentax MX....

If you want a decent 'toy' camera that will either survive impact or not make you cry if it doesn't, might I recommend the Agfa Isola. Shutter speeds of 1/30 or 1/100, f/6.3 or f/11, few to no light leaks as a rule.

Figure $10-20 on Ebay, but most of them seem to show up from Scandinavia or Germany, so factor in another $10-15 in shipping.

I've discovered that after taking a look at the cameras, I now have the music loop in my mac. I didn't put it there. Nice. And I'm not sure how to get it out as it's a Mac Pro I've had about a week now. And finally, I think the music is crap.

Lomography actually puts out very cool packaging of very cool cameras that shoot, um, uh, well they shoot film..hey what a concept, sell funky film cameras to kids that grew up on computers. Now THAT'S reverse psychology! And hell yes they're overpriced. Like anything totally cool is overpriced. I have a Lomography 7 element glass fixed lens fish-eye camera and i absolutely love it. There are very few cameras in this world easier, more fun or, yeah, cooler to shoot with. No angst, no uptight artiness, just free-wheeling creativity. That's what Lomography is ALL about. A White Stripes Holga? hahaha, so who said cameras have to be matte black and have the name taped over in electrical tape to have a coolness rating of ten? heh!

Here's what came of this post: I started looking for Argus cameras on ebay, then pointed them out to my girlfriend, who is still weary of my digital ways. She said, "Oh, hold on," and produced an Argus brick from a bag I'd never seen before. I might go ride my single speed bike to the store and get some film for it.

Call it a rip-off if you must, though this seems needlessly harsh...honestly, how much did you spend on ink and paper for that $500 print you're selling? Or are you saying a camera can't have extrinsic value? Quiet, there may be some Leica fans in earshot!

I think this is pretty awesome as a White Stripes fan. Jack & Meg are all about this bizarre baroque nostalgia in red, white and black, and these cameras fit quite nicely into that image. Combine that with the fact that they're also fun cameras and you've got a great gift for the bluespunk hipster on your shopping list.